M. Claudine Huffer (15 January, 2011)
The majority of the people of Virginia and those who’s working lives and fortunes have been plowed into the Commonwealth’s wine, beef and Thoroughbred breeding industries are eviscerating a proposal aimed at lifting the decades old moratorium on uranium mining at Coles Hill in Pittsylvania County, Virginia.
Vineyard owners, Thoroughbred breeders and beef farmers have long been a big chunk of revenue for the Commonwealth, with wine production in Virginia growing by leaps and bounds within the last three decades. Grape growers have spent several hundred years cultivating their “nectar-of -the-gods” vines in Virginia (including Thomas Jefferson) Wineries throughout the Commonwealth now attract more than 500,000 visitors per year.
However, the palatable fear throughout the region is that the Virginia General Assembly will implode the exploding wine industry if the nuclear fanatics have their way. Jim Webb, Mark Warner and now Robert Hurt—all representing Virginia—have long touted nuclear energy and uranium mining as the best solution for the nation’s energy needs and a springboard to job creation and prosperity for Virginians.
If this is so, why is Southside being referred to as a “sacrifice zone” among the pro-uranium and nuke crowd in Washington, D.C. and Northern Virginia?
Apparently, it seems prosperity is only for some Virginians.
It has been publicly acknowledged that Senator Robert Hurt’s father and several other unacknowledged political cronies are heavily invested in the Coles Hill venture.
“. . . . . . the new Governor’s Inaugural Address properly reflected upon our rich Virginia heritage and acknowledged the great blessings that have been bestowed upon us as a people. The Governor spoke of the blessing of living in a land so rich with natural beauty and natural bounty – a land with superlative natural resources from the mountain forests in the west to the rich farmland in the Valley and the Piedmont and Southside, to our bountiful rivers and Chesapeake Bay in the east. He acknowledged the many great founding Virginians who established this country and set the course for a free people to make their way in the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness.”
Well-connected investors are poised to walk away with billions of dollars while the rest of Southside and Virginia will be left to cope with the deadly radioactive aftermath that is the legacy of uranium mining.
Tax payers will be footing the bill for the billions (possibly trillions) of dollars necessary for clean up after the Virginia/Canadian venture has sucked every ounce of ore from the bowels of the earth and left Southside a radioactive nightmare.
The uranium deposit at Coles’ Hill poses no problem to the health and welfare of humans, animals or the environment if it is left to remain encased in the dense granite that it is locked inside, deep within the earth.
May 31, 2010—The Electrical Trades Union (ETU) of Australia has banned its union members from working in uranium mines, nuclear power stations, or any other part of the nuclear fuel cycle. "We are sending a clear message to the industry and the wider community that vested interests in the uranium and nuclear industries are trying to hoodwink us about this dangerous product and industry," Mr Simpson said in a statement. "Corporate interests and their political supporters are also trying to buy working families off while denying the true short-term and long-term health risks of such jobs."
According to brochures by UraniumFree Virginia and Virginia Interfaith Power &Light, uranium is a highly toxic heavy metal that emits alpha-radiation and is soluble in water. For every half-pound to pound of usable uranium mined, a ton of radioactive rock—known as “tailings”—is excavated and must be held at the mining site for hundreds of years to try and prevent seepage of this radioactive material into groundwater, or through overspills into the surface water, or—known to be absolutely impossible to control—through radioactive dust dispersion by air current.
Virginia’s prized cattle and multi-millon dollar breeding mares will certainly be grazing on contaminated grass if our elected and appointed officials have their way. Wind can blow radioactive uranium dust hundreds of miles in a very short period of time. This radioactive dust will also invisibly and inevitably settle on the grapes destined to become Virginia wines, now sold throughout the U.S. and the world.
These radioactive particles will then pass into the consumer’s digestive system. Will the next step for Virginia be placing “CONTAINS URANIUM DUST!” warning labels on all Virginia agricultural products and animal exports? Local real estate values plummeted merely on the report of the proposed mine and the lifting of the uranium ban.
The Colorado Legislature in 2008 passed a law requiring uranium mining companies, such as Powertech, to fully return all groundwater to its original purity after they finish mining uranium. Corporations looking for uranium ore must first test groundwater before drilling begins to prospect for uranium, a regulation that Powertech called “fatal” to future mining operations. A spokesman for Powertech said that recovering all the radioactive uranium and chemical solutions that have contaminated groundwater through the injection mining process is nearly impossible. “Nobody has been able to do that,” he said. “The groundwater remains at elevated [contamination] levels once you’ve engaged in chemical mining.”
It is alarming to note that every community in which uranium mining has been undertaken has been left with a legacy of chromosome abnormalities, increased birth defects and higher-than-normal deaths from cancer, leukemia and fatal kidney and lung diseases.
This brings to mind the disaster that occurred in Church Rock, New Mexico on 16 July, 1979 (14 weeks after the Three Mile Island nuclear meltdown) in which 1,100 tons of radioactive tailings and 90 million gallons of radioactive water flooded into the Rio Puerco River after a “state-of-the-art” holding dam burst. The uranium mining complex was owned by Virginia-based United Nuclear Corporation. The Rio Puerco is an important Native American water source is still radioactive and contaminated to this day.
Given the far wetter and more volatile climate experienced by Southside Virginia during hurricane and tornado season, the above warning scenario represents a potential environmental catastrophe for the Commonwealth far greater than the more recent and horrific BP disaster. It is absolutely certain that uranium mining is a dangerous threat to the health and safety of Virginia citizens and its precious drinking water—including those sources flowing into the surrounding states. Virginians would be foolish indeed to believe that government and corporate interests will not consider them as expendable and exploitable as their Native American brothers and sisters.
Trieste Lockwood, director of Virginia Interfaith Power & Light, has stated that no uranium mine has ever been licensed east of the Mississippi River due to the extreme weather conditions and higher population density.
Governor, are you listening?
Read more:
http://open.salon.com/blog/oxerjump/2011/01/16/virginias_newest_wine_additive_uranium
